Confirming The Mobile Click; Microsoft Cements DNT Stance

On the Google Mobile Ads blog, product manager Alan Huang announces a new initiative in in-app mobile display ads that asks the user to confirm their clicks. He writes, “By expanding confirmed clicks to in-app image ad banners, we’re now making this improved user experience consistent across the vast majority of the ads that we serve in mobile apps. In our initial tests, we found that confirmed clicks notably improve mobile conversion rates, with a slight decrease in clickthrough rate as accidental clicks are avoided.” Confirm the click! Read more. TechCrunch's Anthony Ha has more. Will Facebook follow suit?

Microsoft Crosses Rubicon

No, not that Rubicon. In an interview with BusinessWeek, General Counsel Brad Smith said (once more) that Microsoft has no intention of going back on its controversial decision to turn Do Not Track ‘on’ by default in Internet Explorer 10. “We crossed the Rubicon and are completely comfortable being on the other side of the river,” he said. “We have no intention of going back and have no intention of engaging in discussion on that possibility.” He adds a forthcoming blog post will explain further. More.

Barter Economy

The industry tends to talk in terms of guaranteed and remnant media, but what about bartered? AdAge reports the practice is alive and well in the mobile app economy. “Disgruntled by the high cost of acquiring users on mobile ad networks, a subset of app makers have created an informal barter economy to promote their products in which they swap ad clicks in hopes of driving installs among users.” More.

With the launch of its Maps app for Apple iOS, Google may be poised to capture huge hyperlocal ad riches. Opus Research analyst Greg Sterling tells MarketWatch, “Maps makes up a tiny slice of mobile advertising revenue today but could be worth well over $1 billion over the next five years... Today most Google Maps queries on Android feature ads. Over time that should equally be true on the iOS version of Google Maps.”

Twitter Keywords

Twitter hasn’t announced anything really big for advertisers in a while, but keeps adding little bells and whistles. The latest is an expansion of keyword-based targeting options for Promoted Tweets in search results. A blog post says, “Marketers can now select from three different matching options when entering keywords: exact match, phrase match, and basic keyword match. We've now launched negative keyword targeting if you want to restrict your Promoted Tweets from showing up when users search for certain keywords.” More.

RTB Please

Mobile app marketing platform Fiksu announce that it’s adding “real-time bidding” buying capabilities to its platform. How this is different from the buying capabilties it had before is unclear given CEO Micah Adler’s platform description in a February interview with AdExchanger. Nevertheless, real-time bidding remains a white-hot buzzword. Read the release.

The Private Life Of Mobile Video

The IAB Mobile Phone Video Diaries - an ongoing study by the industry org - is designed to figure out how people are viewing streaming ads on their portable devices. One finding: 63 percent of such activity is actually happening at home, not on the go. “With the Digital Content NewFronts set for the spring, we’ll certainly see the depth and breadth of original video content that marketers can leverage to reach digital audiences,” says the IAB’s Anna Bager. Read the release.

Evolve Media Goes Native

As the debate rages about the value of native advertising - “it’s misleading; marketing masquerading as content!” or “who doesn’t love contextually relevant advertising” - blog network Evolve Media has released a new ad product called INgage. “Users are savvy and can smell sponsored content a mile away,” Evolve President Brian Fitzgerald tells Clickz’s Lisa Lacy. “This program allows us to place brands in-content in a manner that doesn't take our users away from the driving force behind their consumption, which essentially encourages a stronger connection between the brand and the user.” Read more.